plumbing remodel tip

[MountainDon]

I meant to post this a long time ago, like a year or so. Talking with NM_Shooter today reminded me. A few historical notes before we get to the meat.

Our early 80's home. like many before the days of PEX and manifold.s has the fresh water piping done in a series style. That is, from the main supply to one place, then another and another. Points of use use like sinks have their own shut offs but showers and tubs do not. When we re-plumbed from PB to PEX a few years ago the cost to switch to a manifold system was too great. Replumbing all the supply piping cost enough.

A couple of years after we built we decided to enlarge the master bath, install a whirlpool tub, a fancy glass wall shower with nicely tiled walls and so on. Rather than reuse the original shower control I discovered one of the earliest models of shower controls that offered pressure temperature control. What a wonderful device! No more sudden temperature changes if someone flushed a nearby toilet. I re-plumbed that entire bathroom in copper when I did the remodel, which included tearing all the drywall out to the studs and ceiling trusses and doing it all over. So when the whole house re-plumb was done, it was whole house minus the master bath.

Last year that shower control developed a problem. It no longer accurately held temperature and the flow rate became slower. The manual, yes I saved the manual, had a nice troubleshooting section and listed the replacement parts. The first thing I found was that Lowes and HD had no parts for the brand, Mixit. Neither did my Ace or True Value hardware stores. Uh-oh. After an internet search I had discovered the company was no more. Further searches, I don't give up easily at times, finally revealed a source for parts. But wait a minute, something seemed wrong. The prices were more than the brand new shower controls I had seen in the stores! It turned out as the last repository of repair parts they were very proud of their parts and had priced them as antiques or being made from gold.

I did not want to tear out the tile work to get into the wall. Luckily that wall backed onto the other bathroom right behind the wall mirror above the sink. So I removed the mirror and recut the hole the PEX whole house re-plumber had used to replace the PB to by copper that was in that wall. While the wall was open I also installed a ball valve in the hot and cold lines to the shower.  That's the re-plumbing tip!  It most likely is not code, but it works. Doing that allowed me to take my time in replacing the shower control. I did not have to shut off the whole house when working on the replacement. The valves will also permit easy servicing down the road whenever that may happen. Hopefully not for another 20 years. The mirror is easily removed and the wall patch is hinged.

Shooter ran into a similar issue with a bathroom repair, so now there's two of us around here with this unconventional repair.

[Shawn B]

Good tip Don.

I'll add one to. Stick with "Name Brand" fixtures, like Delta, Kohler, etc. Even the Delta clone knockoffs are acceptable in my mind because they can use Delta repair kits. Plus other companies make repair kits for Delta, so it is usually not to hard to find repair kits, stems, etc for these fixtures at most hardware stores.

[MountainDon]

That's also a good tip. I can still even buy parts for the cheapy original Sterling brand fixtures we still have in some rentals. Of course it wasn't temperature/pressure controlled. Everything in the house is now Delta with a Price Pfister.